The national parks preceded the National Park Service, but the first great natural park was a state park. Californiaâs Yosemite State Park was established in 1864, by a federal cession approved by President Abraham Lincoln, and on October 21, 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes toured Californiaâs Yosemite in an open carriage.
In fact, humans have been capturing the energy of moving water for thousands of years. Today, harnessing the power of moving water to generate electricity, known as hydroelectric power, is the largest source of emissions-free, renewable electricity in the United States and worldwide.
By being judicious about our food purchases and careful about using food before it goes to waste, we can save water, energy, and money, and reduce greenhouse gases and toxic loads to our ecosystems. Electricity requires water: one kilowatt-hour of electricity takes about 25 gallons of water to produce.et, taken together, our aggregate behavior is the source of these problems. An individual home can waste 10,000 gallons of water a year to leaking fixtures; as a nation, we lose one trillion gallons of water to leaks.